Un-Functioning
by CenterForInsanity
Summary: The war is over and everyone is given their happy ending. Only, in real life, there is no "happily ever after", just the ability to function after catastrophe.
1. Chapter 1

It was Anya who had wanted the fresh start, the family, the picket-fence life. Not him. He was a soldier, a fighter. He was a Gear, and no matter what they said about serving his duty and an honorable discharge, Marcus knew he would always be a Gear. That's all he was. He had fought the bloodiest of battles, he had lost everything. And then Anya came, sitting down beside him on that beach that should have been the symbol for something new and wasn't. She had come and placed her hand in his, saying that they finally had a tomorrow.

There was only one problem with that. He didn't have a tomorrow. His whole life, everything that he was, was in his past. His father, who he had lost, only to have the chance to save him and then watch him die again. Dom, his comrade, his friend, something so much more than a brother. Even Anya, his once lover, was in the past. Anya was left almost untouched by the war, like it had all glanced off of her with only minor damage. But it had changed Marcus. The war had utterly destroyed him. It had taken everything that he was and put it through a grinder, shredding his life to pieces before his very eyes.

And Anya wanted to say that they finally had a tomorrow? There was no tomorrow. There was no moving forward after this. Marcus would learn to function – he always did – but that would be the end of it. He would adapt and survive because he didn't know how to do anything less, but that's all he would be doing from now on, surviving. There were pieces of him missing that he would never get back, that he could never even dream of coping with, and yet somehow he would pull what was left of him together and drag steadily onward, broken and bloodied and hollow, but moving, like any good soldier. Like any true hero.

She had wanted to settle down, and considering she was the only thing left from his old life, no matter how much he hated it now, he pulled strings to get her the modern equivalent of a picket-fence house. It wasn't so much of pulling strings as it was just going up to the right people and saying what he wanted. Delta squad had almost single-handedly saved the human race. The rest of the world owed them, or at least, that seemed to be the mentality. Marcus hated it, the same way he hated his memories, the same way he hated his nightmares, but as much as he hated it, he used it for Anya. He had gotten the house for her, pretty much just handed over to him on a silver platter to give to her and she was thrilled. But all Marcus saw were white walls and a big yard that should have been Dom's. All he saw were the things that should have belonged to his brother, to his father. Anya, on the first night in the house, slept in a peace Marcuse couldn't remember ever having. Marcus spent the entire night sitting in a corner, facing the door with his lancer ready, unable to sleep. The second night he wept.

Marcus could function around Anya to make himself look the way any doting husband should. He said all the right things, moved the right way, kissed her at the right times, but to him it was like navigating a minefield. Any screw up and she would be asking him what was wrong, unknowingly dredging into memories he would rather forget, digging down into the filthiest parts of what he hated himself for and bringing it to the surface of his mind. He could fight them back, the memories, but each time it got harder, and each time he felt more hollow and weak.

And it was Anya who had wanted children, not Marcus. He knew he wouldn't be able to take care of them. He was exhausted enough dancing on eggshells around Anya, but to care for a child as well? The endeavor was not the most intelligent, if not the most dangerous and Marcus would kill himself if he ever let himself harm a child by simply being who he was now. In all honesty, he would not wish himself on anyone. He had all but begged her to stop asking him for children, but when she would demand an explanation as to why a married couple in an almost extinct race should not have children, he could only say one phrase.

"I just can't," he would say. "I just can't. Anything but this." And he meant it. Anya could have asked to be crowned queen of the surviving humans and Marcus would have found a way to give it to her. Anything but making him live the horror of trying to protect children from the very nightmare that had become his life.

When she had found out she couldn't have children, Anya had been devastated. Children had been her dream, her future. All she had ever wanted since this damn war started was to have a safe home and be a mother. It was petty and childish, but she had wanted it so bad that she had latched on to the non-existent image of her and Marcus in a white house full of children and had clung to it for dear life. At times, when things were going all to hell and there was nothing to give her a reason to keep alive, she would dust off that mental image and keep going. And then she realized she was barren, sterile. She knew it was nothing she could have controlled, but the very knowledge screamed in her head, yelling that she was unworthy to be a mother. She was determined to prove the screaming wrong.

She had brought up adopting God knows how many times. There were certainly enough children without parents that needed a home. Marcus wouldn't budge though. He just couldn't do what she asked. In the end, he figured, that was the last thing, the final straw. There had been too many pieces that were straining everything that they did, and that had just been the one thing to make her get up from the couch, grab her bag, and just walk out the door, leaving him with a house that haunted him, a torn-apart soul, and a mind too shattered to even begin picking up the pieces.


	2. Chapter 2

Marcus could have lived a fat, wealthy man for the rest of his life without ever having to work again. Despite the fact that the world was still a pile of shit and was barely even a teetering husk of a society, Marcus received gifts from practically everyone. He got money, favors, food, drinks, furniture, and the closest things to 'vacation homes' that this new world had. You name it, he could have snapped his fingers and it would be at his doorstep within the hour. But Marcus hated being the hero. He hated being the one that everyone looked up to, that everyone believed could save the world. It was the heaviest burden to bear. He felt as though he was physically dragging himself along from the weight of the people's praise and at times he got angry. Dom was a hero. He had driven into a tank of Imulsion to save his brothers in arms. But where were the people to litter his grave with flowers and medals and items of remembrance? Where were the people to proclaim Dom the hero?

In reality, it came down to the remainder of Delta Squad to do that. Marcuse went to see Dom every day, and every once in a while, he'd find letters from Cole tucked neatly under a rock on the headstone for Dom, Cole's way of coping. Or he's find various little tinkered out do-dads from Baird with notes attached like "Could have used this when the truck died in the tunnels," or "Remember that thing you didn't know I was talking about? This is that thing." All of Baird's notes ended with "You're an asshole, Dom." It was Baird's own crude way of saying 'we miss you.' Marcus never left anything. There was nothing to leave that could have spoken the volumes he could never say, nothing to spit the words out that he should have said a thousand times over. So he left nothing at the grave. Just two small worn spots where he always stood, sometimes for over an hour, just staring at the body-less grave, surrounded by thousands like it in the memorial to the dead COG soldiers that were never recovered.

Oddly enough, that was how he reconnected with one part of Delta.

Clayton Carmine was a good brother, a good, doting big brother. Even after his brother's deaths, he cared for them in the only way he could. He kept their rough-cut headstones so clean they almost shone and made sure the flowers were always fresh, that nothing was ever out of place. He was a good older brother. And that was how Marcus found him.

Marcus had been walking through the massive graveyard after his visit to Dom and had seen Carmine caring for his brothers' graves. At first, Marcus wasn't even sure if it was him, but then he heard the unmistakable Carmine voice talking to family that would never return.

"Gotta keep it clean guys, or Mom'll get mad. Remember how she used to get so mad when we didn't clean our rooms?" The young Gear had laughed bitterly, a strange sound coming from the usually ridiculously cheerful man. Marcus had walked up and just stood amazed until Clayton had turned to look at him.

"Sarge?" he had whispered, looking both astonished and terrified at seeing his former superior. "Marcus?"

Marcus simply nodded to the young man. "Carmine."

There were really no words to say. 'How are you,' would have been met, by either party, with a half-hearted lie saying they were okay and anything deeper than that wasn't safe territory to tread on for the brothers in arms. In the end, Carmine wound up blurting out the first thing that seemed to even mildly fit into their current lives.

"Do you need a job?"

It was a simple question, but something about how he said it that made Marcus realize that how he answered would tell Carmine all he needed to know about much more than a possible job hunt. Yes he needed a job, something to throw off his increasingly – terrifyingly – quiet life, something to give him a reason to stop coming to see Dom and stop reminding him why he hated himself. He definitely didn't need the money – hell, none of Delta did – but he did need a job.

And that was how he came to work in a factory making parts for various vehicles. It wasn't a glorious job and it wasn't a clean job, but it was just the kind of job he needed. Working around dangerous equipment meant that he had to keep his mind on what he was doing which meant that he didn't have the opportunity to even think for a moment on anything else but what he was doing. Plus, it was loud and the loudness was a nice break from the suffocating silence of a house he couldn't get rid of no matter how hard he tried. It was even physically exhausting, working heavy machinery all day and moving bulky parts from one machine to the next at a break-neck pace. It made him stay in shape, but also then, by the end of the day he was so tired, he would just collapse into the couch and fall asleep. (Anya had taken the bed and he hadn't stopped her.) It was the perfect job. Clayton was a good brother and a good man. He knew what he was doing.

And so did Marcus. He knew his job was just another form of suicide, just one that would take a long time and one he could look like a decent man doing. There was some part of him, in the dark corners of his mind that seemed increasingly larger as of late, and wondered if Carmine had known that that's what this would be when he offered to get Marcus the job, or if he was still just a little too naïve. But then again, there was another part of his mind that thought that Carmine must have known, but that he understood to some extent, and didn't argue. Losing two brothers in a row must have been hard, and everyone needs their own potential suicides to keep themselves from going totally crazy. Whichever it was, Marcus thanked Carmine in his mind a thousand times over for this job.


	3. Chapter 3

_A Note From The Author__: I want to give a quick thanks to Muffy the Dough Slayer for giving me the motivation to actually put this chapter up. I had slightly given up on this fanfic due to the fact that I hadn't gotten any reviews and that not many people were reading it, and Muffy was kind enough to give me my first review (ever) and give me the push to put this chapter up. It's not horribly long, but I hope you all enjoy it all the same._

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It was a long day. They were always long days, but some days were just that much longer than others. This one was almost unbearable. Marcus had made the uncommon mistake of letting his mind drift from what he was doing during work and it had resulted in a nasty gash across his forearm. It hadn't seemed like anything too serious at the time, nothing that would need immediate medical attention, but it was painful and had gotten all kinds of dirt and grit in it from his work day, despite the fact that he had bandaged it as best he could do in thirty seconds. Now, as he walked home down the cracked-pavement streets of gray, he unwrapped the bandage and looked at it.

It was puffy and red and Marcus almost wondered if he should see about looking up an old corpsman to look at it. Although he had had deeper wounds, this one looked much worse than it did before. It wasn't bleeding anymore, but yellowish liquid oozed from it in an attempt to clear the debris from the gash. Marcus sighed. This was the last thing he needed at the end of a long day. He paused under one of the few working light-posts that didn't have a used up hooker under it to inspect the wound more closely and he pressed on it experimentally. He pulled his hand back when the pain spiked at the touch and he seriously debated going to see a corpsman now. But his bed was calling him, even from over a mile away and Marcus needed the sleep.

It was then that he heard it.

"You know, just starin' at it isn't going to make it go away."

Marcus looked up at a young boy sitting in the street with a guitar. Both the boy and the instrument looked like they had gone through hell and back, but then again, who didn't. The kid's greasy blonde hair was covered with a dirty knit cap that may have been green at some point, but Marcus was damned if he knew for sure. The clothes on the kid were way too big for his small, probably fourteen or fifteen year old body and were riddled with holes and so many various stains that Marcus didn't even want to know where they all came from. The guitar, like the boy, looked horribly rugged. With only three strings and a cracked body, Marcus was surprised that the boy was actually playing a halfway decent tune on the slowly dying instrument. The boy just sat and played his guitar, staring at Marcus with eyes as shockingly blue as his own. For once, Marcus knew exactly how it felt to be stared down by his own set of life-hardened, frozen blue eyes.

"You listenin' to me? Stop starin' at it. It won't make it go away." The kid's voice had the faintest accent, like he had been around Islanders a little too much, but not enough to fully pick up the odd lilt of the words.

"Don't tell me how to take care of a wound, kid," Marcus growled out. "I've had plenty in my day." The kid rolled his eyes.

"Well it's not like you're doing anything about it," he shot back. Marcus grunted and debated teaching the kid some manners, but decided against beating up a fourteen year old and continued his walk home. He froze for a step when the kid called after him, inquiring about being tipped for his advice, but then Marcus just clenched his fists and continued on his way. Being stubborn as he was, he ignored his previous idea of going to see a corpsman and decided to finish his mile and a half trek home. He wasn't overly concerned about getting jumped in the dark of the night. Being a Gear had its perks. Marcus, like any other Gear, was massive in the shoulders and chest, and when hunched over, looked like a boulder tromping down the street. Even when he wasn't looking like he wanted to murder someone, which was often, people got out of his way, moving aside for the tall, muscular creature of a man with a nasty scar running down his face. Many Gears got the same treatment; Marcus had seen it a thousand times. Everyone was hardened from the wartime, but the Gears were some of the few who had gotten fed properly and thus had a massive build instead of a mal-nourished, withering body still trying to cope with real food. It made it possible for him to walk home without fear, not that he would be afraid anyway, having survived hundreds of grub attacks in the middle of the night back in the day.

Damn, but if thinking like that didn't make him feel old. Marcus didn't lie to himself, not often anyway. When he woke up one morning, realizing that the war had eaten up fifteen years of his life, he realized that he was past his "starting over" point. He was getting older. He hurt half the time and he wasn't sure if they were just old war wounds or if they were just part of getting older, but either way, he couldn't pretend like he was a young soldier anymore. He was Marcus Fenix, soon to be old man. He was Marcus Fenix, the rotting sob who could save an entire fucking planet but couldn't figure out how to live a "domestic" life on his own without wanting to put a bullet through his head. And he had most definitely considered that option a thousand times over.

He gave a non-committal grunt to one of the street security when he came to a checkpoint in the road. After dark, the guys would come out and sit in their little booths with bullet-proof glass that looked like old toll stations and check IDs as they were swiped through the scanner to make sure no one was trying to sneak through after curfew. It didn't stop people from actually trying, but the new government had to try and create jobs somehow, and with and excess of Gears with nothing to return to, it was simple to transfer a select few over to police and security guards. Marcus didn't even bother to look up as he scanned his ID pass. The guard in the booth, Ross Kent, grunted in return to Marcus and let him through without bothering to ask to check the ID anymore. Ross was similar to Marcus in that he was past his prime but was still a Gear to his core. He had skin that had turned leathery from time spent in the sun and big, strong hands that were used to holding a lancer. His brown hair was cut in a military regulation fade and his hazel eyes were like Marcus', cold and hardened by a dozen or so too many battles. The two had a sort of silent camaraderie. Every once in a while Marcus would pause and talk to the man, but most times they didn't speak, simply give each other a passing nod and a grunt. It was one of the few things that were simple enough that Marcus could find pleasure in it.

Passing through the checkpoint was like passing into a different world. Whereas the rest of the world was grey and cracked and crumbling, the place the Marcus lived reminded him of how the world used to be. The streets were new pavement. Not well paved, but it was unbroken and straight and houses that were the closest things to what houses used to be, instead of apartment buildings that were literally about to fall apart, lined the roads. A few even had garages with new cars in them. There were few people in the city, hell, the world even, who could afford new houses, even the new automobiles, but those that could lived just down the block from Marcus. And Marcus hated his life there.

He was the only man in the neighborhood who worked in a factory. Almost everyone else there was a CEO of one of the few new companies or worked for the government somehow. They had to be just to afford to live in the neighborhood. Unless they were Marcus Fenix, who had gotten the house as a favor and now he wasn't allowed to pay for it, even if he wanted to. He sighed as he unlocked the door to his too-white house and stepped in, kicking off his boots and making his way to the bathroom, shedding grime, mud, and sweat soiled clothes as he went, depositing them on the floor. He didn't care. After fifteen years of sleeping caked in dirt from the road and his own sweat, the thought of leaving dirty clothes on the floor for twenty minutes while he scrubbed the day's crud from his body didn't really bother him as much as it might other people. The last thing off his body was his do-rag, which he tossed on the bathroom counter while he let the shower run to warm up. Even in the nicest of town, he still had to wait for the water to heat up. At least the pipes didn't leak.

The bar of soap was rough against his skin as he sudsed up and cleaned the grime off of his body, leaving the bottom of the shower dark with oil and crystalized sweat. He sighed and rested a hand against the shower wall, letting the now hot water run over his body. His arm stung. His chest felt hollow.

He thought back to that kid from before, the child with the guitar. He found it ironic how much the child looked like the perfect mix of him and Anya. He had had Anya's blonde hair and his own icy blue eyes. It was terrifying and shocking because suddenly he was smacked in the face with how real having a child with Anya might have been like, what kind of a world that child would have grown up in. He wondered for a moment, if his own child would have ended up like that, alone on the streets with nothing but a broken guitar and the clothes on his back, or if maybe, in some stroke of luck, that child might have gotten to live in the best of what this new world had to offer, if that kid might have gotten the chance to not only survive this world but to thrive. He doubted the latter option.

Marcus rinsed the soap off of his body and turned the water off. He stepped out of the shower, drying his hair off, then wrapping the towel around his waist, going back out through the house to pick up his clothes and toss then back by the washing machine. He had enough clothes to wait until the weekend to actually do the laundry. Another heavy sigh escaped him and he went into the bedroom to grab a pair of sleeping pants, yanking them on before practically face-planting into the couch. It had been a long day.


	4. Chapter 4

_Wow, it has been far too long since my last update. I have been very busy, but I shouldn't make excuses. Thank you to everyone who reviewed and helped me put forth the effort to finish this next chapter. I will be doing my best to not take as long to post the next one._

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When Marcus passed by the spot the next day where he had seen the boy, the child was gone, but Marcus spotted an alley nearby with several large cardboard boxes turned on their sides and various scrap metal lean-to's. He hated to think that that kid - damn, he was just a boy - lived in one of those. But even if he did, he doubted he would have been able to find the kid unless he wanted to be found. The homeless people in this city had a habit of disappearing whenever they didn't want to be found and you'd be damned if you so much as wanted to see so much as a hair of them anywhere. Then, as soon as you'd stop looking, they'd pop right back up as if they never even left. It made Marcus nervous as all hell, but he supposed that everyone needed to learn some things just to have been able to survive those fifteen ungodly years of war.

And maybe that's exactly what had happened to that kid, because Marcus didn't see one lick of him for days, then pretty soon those days turned into a week, and then two, and then all of the days just started to blur together and he couldn't remember if he hadn't seen the kid in one month or two. If he was smart, he'd just forget the louse and dwell on his regrets and continue on with his suicide job until he worked himself into the ground, but there was one problem: instead of that happening, the kid just joined the faces that haunted him at night. It was like a terrifying cycle in his brain. Anya, Dom, his father, the Carmine brothers, the guitar kid, Anya, Dom… There was nothing in his life outside of his job to make his brain stop, to make him think that maybe, just maybe, there was some form of hope in this world. That is, until one day, something did come to break up the monotony in his life with all the force of a bulldozer.

And that something just happened to be Augustus "the Cole Train" Cole.

It was strange, really. Marcus never used his telephone, never gave his number to anyone, and never got any calls. So it surprised him when he came home from work one night and saw the little red light flashing on his answering machine, indicating that he had a message. Approaching the machine as if it may have been rigged, he pressed the play button and immediately Cole's voice came ripping out of the speaker in all of his upbeat, loud glory.

"Hey, Marcus baby!" the greeting shouted in the ridiculously quiet house. "Haven't heard from you in a while! Hehe, get this, they're gonna be puttin' in a thrashball field in a town near you, so I'll be in your neck of the woods for a while! Ya hear that, baby? The Cole Train's back, WHOO! Call you later when I've got more details. Later Marcus!"

Cole. After all these years, and the man still couldn't be seen as any form of unhappy. Fifteen years of war and the loss of a career and he could still be ridiculously high energy and laughing as if he was still living in his glory days. Marcus found himself letting a small, fond smile tug at the corner of his mouth. How long had it been since he had seen Cole? Baird? Hell, anyone he had known in the COG Army? He couldn't remember. But still, Cole had bothered to look him up, and that meant something. Marcus began to make his way to the bathroom, shedding his clothes and rolling them up in a ball in his arms as he went, then dropped them on the floor outside of the bathroom as he stepped inside the tiled room.

Delta Squad. He used to hear one or two lines of news from them when he and Anya were together, but since Anya left, he had essentially cut himself off from the world. He hadn't had any kind of interaction with any of the former Delta Squad until he had run into Carmine at the cemetery. The hot water of the shower washed over his body as he cleaned of the day's grime from him. If only it could wash away the guilt he felt for neglecting his squad like that as well. He shook his head. Guilt would get him nowhere now.

"Besides," he murmured to himself, trying to ignore the fact that he was, in fact, talking to himself now, "there won't be any time for that once Cole gets here." Whenever the hell that would be.

A thrashball field. What a thought. For a moment, Marcus let himself feel horribly and ridiculously jealous of Cole. If Marcus learned on thing in this new, savage world, was that random entertainment was as important to people as their next meal. Here, people were always on edge, always working, so to have something for entertainment was an amazing break. And if they brought back thrashball, well, Marcus couldn't even think a number as high as the kind of money Cole would probably be making.

But the money wasn't why he was jealous. No, he was jealous because Cole had a something to pick up the pieces with. The man had something to go back to, a life that he could rebuild. Sure, he wasn't in his prime anymore and he most certainly wouldn't be playing any games himself, but he would probably end up coaching or teaching or being a talent scout for the new teams, so he'd still be a part of his dream career.

Marcus slammed the side of his fist against the wall. He had had that. He had Anya, the fancy house. He had had everything that his life had been before, had all of the pieces to fit together, but for some reason, it didn't work. Now he was stuck in a jealous and guilty cycle of thoughts switching from his friends, to his family, to that kid with the guitar. Marcus sighed and turned off the water. What the hell was he doing? What was the point? He stepped out of the shower and walked into his room, putting on sweat pants and toweling his hair dry as he went. Nothing in the world made sense. Honest people, good people, had died in the war and scumbags and other creeps had survived simply because they knew how to kill or were just willing to figure out how. The world was now very scarce on the good people. He rubbed his forehead as he sat down on the couch. This was a fine way to present himself to his squad: emotionally beat to shit and physically suffering for it.

"Well, shit Marcus," he growled at himself. "You've really fucked yourself over now."

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_Thank you for reading! Please feel free to tell me what you think._


	5. Chapter 5

_Author's Note: What? Finally an update? Sorry for the long wait, guys. I have been very busy and preoccupied by things going on in my life, so this fanfic, unfortunately, kind of got put on the back-burner for a while. However, a majorly huge thanks to tank destroyer for kicking me in the butt enough to get me motivated to finish this chapter. That being said, I hope you all enjoy._

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A few days passed in much the same way they had before, but now Marcus had something to look forward too and dread all in the same thought. Cole was coming. He had not heard much more from the man, just another call telling him he would be coming to the town one over from Marcus' sometime in the next month. The cheerful man had promised in his exuberant voice that he would call again when he had contact information for Marcus.

Marcus shook his head as he walked home from work one night. Cole. It was as if the man was a perpetual supply of cheerfulness. It wasn't so much that the man was untouched by the pain of the war, just that he had overcome it and learned to cope better than all the rest of them. Marcus envied him for that, but couldn't think poorly of the man, anyway.

Marcus paused briefly under a lamp post and looked at his arm. The gash that had been there was healing well and was now reduced to a thick scar of puckered skin. He examined it in the light of the lamp post, checking it over, when the boy's face crept back into his mind, the boy with the guitar. How long had it been now? How many months had passed since he had seen that boy? Marcus frowned at the thought, his lips pressed into a hard line. There was not a day that went by when he hadn't worried about that kid.

"You still starin' at that scratch on your arm, Sarge?"

Marcus' head snapped up when he heard that voice. His eyes locked with the icy blue shade that his own eyes held and he froze. Speak of the devil.

The boy sat with his back against the same tired, old building from before, the same old and broken guitar sitting in his lap. It would have seemed as if the boy had never moved from that stop, had it not been for the extra few cracks in his guitar and the massive, blooming purple bruise staining the left side of the boy's face from eye socket to hairline. The boy's neck and cheeks were covered in shallow cuts and bruises from God knows what and his shirt and "new" gray hat were stained with what looked like dried blood.

"Where the hell have you been?" he shot back, ignoring the boy's jab at him. The boy snorted.

"Around. Sorry ya didn't see me, but I had to disappear for a while." He gave Marcus a fake flirtatious look and threw a kissing face at him. "Why? 'D ya miss me?"

Marcus snarled. Cheeky brat, wasn't he? Even so, he couldn't hide the fact from himself that he was glad to see the little snot, beat to shit or otherwise.

"Keep dreamin' kid."

"Sure thing, Sarge." The boy grinned a lopsided smile and revealed a gap where his right incisor should have been. Marcus catalogued it in his mind for later reference, along with the other marks on him, and crossed his arms.

"What the hell happened to you?" The COG asked, his voice a bit more biting than he had intended. Oh well, worse things could happened. Honestly, he was just glad to see the kid alive. One less person to fear for at night, at least that's what he told himself.

"Yeah, like I'd tell you that, Sarge." The kid snorted.

Marcus bristled. "Why you calling me that?"

The boy rolled his eyes. "I ain't stupid, COG. I know who you are: Marcus Fenix, Savior of Sera." He let out one cold, humorless laugh. "Some savior. You save the world from the Locust and it's still all going down the shitter."

"Watch your mouth, kid." Marcus warned, but he had to admit, the boy was right. Marcus was the so called savior, but the world was a still a dying place, even without the Locust. He had devoted fifteen years, hell, a lifetime to saving the world from one thing and it was still a hell hole to live in. People fought and killed each other for scraps of food and hunted rats and raided and plundered and were barbarians just to _survive_. No. He was no savior. He was a condemner.

By saving the world from one evil, he had condemned it to another. Die like heroes in the heat of battle, or die like savages in the shit littered streets. Some savior.

But the kid just snorted again. "I'm not some blushin' saint, Sarge."

"Really?" The war hero's voice was colored with humorless sarcasm. "I never would have guessed."

They boy's icy blue eyes danced with a bit of dark humor. "You're a real piece of shit, Sarge."

Marcus felt the momentary flare of anger, but took a deep breath and his shoulders slumped some.

"Seems like you know more than you let on," he muttered, half in sarcasm. The boy snorted.

"No kidding."

Marcus raised an eyebrow. That was not the response he expected. However, if it was true that the boy knew more than he let on…Well, it would certainly explain some things.

"You're a Snitch." He ventured. The boy feigned hurt.

"Snitch is such an ugly word," the boy said. He pulled his sweatshirt tight around him and snuggled down a little bit into it, trying to fend off the cold with the worn piece of dirty clothing that was full of massive holes. Marcus kept an even look at the boy. "I prefer to be called a dealer in information."

Marcus crossed his arms and settled back in a casual stance, still managing to look intimidating with his bulging muscles. "And what kind of information is it that you deal in?"

The boy's look turned smug. "Anything you want to know." He paused, and his smirk grew. "For a price." Marcus nearly growled. Damn Snitches, of course they would want something.

"Tell me something you know about me," he ventured after a moment of thought. He already knew all about himself. "That shouldn't cost anything." He boy gave him a look that clearly said he was not amused with whatever joke he thought Marcus was pulling.

"You don't understand the whole concept of dealing in information, do you?" he said. Marcus resisted the urge to sigh.

"Look, I already know everything about myself, so why would it cost anything for you to tell me about myself?"

The boy blinked slowly, then pinched the bridge of his nose like a tired parent might do when attempting to explain something to a child.

"See, you know what you do, where you go, and what your life is like, but to know what I know about your life?" The boy shook his head. "No, that costs something, because you could use what I know about you for something, the same way you use what you know about what an enemy knows about you, get it?" The sentence was much more complicated than it needed to be, but somehow, Marcus still got it. And he felt incredibly stupid afterwards. The Sargent sighed. Well, as of right now, he'd let the kid know what he knew about him and leave it at that. Besides, he wasn't so sure that he wanted to know what the kid knew. So he decided on something else.

"Tell me about Augustus Cole."

The boy raised an eyebrow. "The Cole Train?" He paused, then settled back against the building again. "Okay, what do you want to know about him?"

Marcus thought for a moment. How could he ask something without giving out too much information, but without having to pay for too much information? He took a moment to calculate in his head before speaking.

"Cole is moving for a bit," when Marcus said that, the boy just rolled his eyes. "Can you tell me where he'll be?"

The boy almost laughed outright.

"He'll be in New Jacinto," he chuckled. "Please, Sarge, that's all? You don't want to know that he'll most likely call you within the week to tell you that he'll be moving on the twenty-first of the month, or that he'll be able to come and visit for three to four days on the twenty-seventh?" The boy had a cocky smirk on his face. Marcus had to admit, he was a little impressed. And also worried. He really wasn't sure which of the two he should feel more of, though.

"The military hasn't even released that information to Cole yet." He growled. The boy just rolled his eyes and attempted to start tuning his guitar. Attempted.

"Of course, and your military never leaks information, or withholds information from you." His voice dripped heavily with sarcasm. Marcus glared, but couldn't argue. The boy just chuckled at him. Damn Snitch.

The COG turned and began to walk away and the boy whistled sharply to get his attention and shouted.

"Hey, wait a minute, _Sarge_," the kid mocked the title with his voice, "you still owe me for the info."

Marcus stopped and ground his teeth together, turning sharply on his heels. "And what, exactly," he snarled, his patience wearing thin, "would it be that I owe you?" Why the hell did he even care about this kid, anyway? But, looking back at that boy, surprisingly small and thin, practically drowning in his clothes and playing a broken guitar, even bruised as he was, reminded him why the poor kid had haunted him in the first place.

Said boy seemed to think, then looked over at Marcus. "Your jacket."

Marcus looked down at the thick, military issued jacket he wore. This was the only one he had like it, and it had survived with him for quite a long time, but it was dirty, stained, and faded in many areas. It was still warm and refused to fall apart, though, so Marcus kept using it. He probably would have to call in a few favors to get another one just like it. Which was probably why the boy wanted it. Despite the stains, it was a hell of a nice jacket to have. Marcus thought for a moment, and then looked over at the boy.

The kid's attire was something a little less than pathetic. Massive holes riddle his clothes and the stains looked…less than legally acquired. Marcus finally sighed.

"Fine."

He took off the jacket and threw it too the kid, who quickly stood and pulled the jacket on. It was way too big on the small frame of the boy, but he looked much better suited for the cold now. For a moment, Marcus didn't really regret losing the jacket to the kid.

"Thanks Sarge," the boy sat back down and started playing the guitar again. "Have fun freezing your ass off on the way home."

And then, just like that, the moment was gone. Marcus growled and turned, heading to go back his home. His pace was angry and quick, the boy's laughter ringing behind him, and his stuffed his hands in his pockets. Damn, it was cold. Why the hell did he agree to take off his jacket? He probably could have just walked away. It wasn't like the kid could have taken him or anything if he had decided to not may him for the info.

Still, Marcus thought, at least the kid has some sort of decent clothing. At the very least.

And as Marcus fell asleep that night, as stupid and as corny and as pathetic as it may have sounded, he slept a little easier because, for the first time since the damn war started all those years ago, he felt like had had legitimately made difference for someone, a difference for the better.

And for the first time in a long time, Marcus felt like maybe, just maybe, for once he hadn't fucked up.

But that was a big maybe.

* * *

_Well, there we are, chapter 5. Please feel free to review. I love to hear what you have to say._


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